Noni Flower

I adore the Noni Flower Bags. I found that my local knit shop had the patterns. The flowers are a separate pattern then the bag itself. I purchased only the Camilla flower pattern. My local knit shop doesn’t carry the Cascade 220 yarn and recommends the Brown Sheep Bulky as an alternative. However, I fell in love with this Paint Box yarn. It has a nice blend that changes from a Pink at one end into a Purple at the end.

I read some blogs about creating these flowers, which mentioned that the large flowers need more than one ball of yarn. I chose to create the medium size flower to save on yarn. It suggested that the leaves should be created using 6 stitches in the width, then working up to 11 rows/stitches in the length. My first thought was that the petal leaves were too narrow and long, but my past experience with felting a bag I felt that the petals would shrink-up. I used a longhaired acrylic yarn as an accent for the center bobble.

The pattern suggests that the petals should be twisted around and sewn together. I did this loosely because I thought the shrinking would tighten up the total flower. It didn’t. If I do this again I would sew the petals together more tightly.

I do like the size of the medium flower except I would the make the petals wider with 7 or 8 stitches and less long with 9 or 10 rows tall.

I felted my flower in the washing machine with a warm wash and warm rinse setting. After the first wash cycle the stitches were still visible so I washed them for a second cycle. To try and form this flower I pressed the flower into a ball shape and placed a crumpled sheet of newspaper between the first and second round of petals. It did dry in a good shape but the petals were very floppy. For me to use this flower I believe I would need some stiffener to keep the petals in shape. I’ll post the final pictures once I find and use some liquid starch.